A major impediment facing many laboratories interested in understanding basic genetic and physiological mechanisms, associated pathogenesis, or developing new treatments for nutrition and obesity-related disorders is access to relevant genetic animal models and resources needed to adequately test novel hypotheses. The AMC services as outlined in the specific aims and detailed below (section 4) describe how this core directly supports the basic needs of NORC investigators via complementary approaches using the most up to date technologies. The core provides innovative support to nutrition/obesity research by continuously testing and implementing newly developed instrumentation and methodologies (e.g. body composition analysis of zebrafish models, defined aquatic diets, new aquatic species, and new methods for creating genetically engineered mice).